Frequent floods, landslides, extreme hot weather and other natural phenomena are more frequently affecting our cities. This recent increase in occurrences is in part attributed to climate change.

What are the effects of Climate Change on your city? What can your city do about Climate Change? To assist your city and other cities world-wide to answer these questions and provide instruments to deal with climate change, The Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS) offers a three week course from 10 - 28 June 2013 in collaboration with UN-HABITAT. This course offers concrete management tools for climate change. The course will be held in Rotterdam, one of the most dynamic cities of The Netherlands, a country that after centuries of land reclamation; now transforms land into lakes, builds floating houses and gardens on roofs.

The course offers tools to manage the impacts of Climate Change, which are an integral part of sustainability. It will examine its impacts and provide skills to develop strategies for climate mitigation and adaptation. It will review and discuss a range of management tools that are at the disposal of municipalities including tax incentives, subsidized public transport, urban sprawl prevention, Feed-In-Programmes, Renewable Portfolio Standards, sustainable buildings and retrofitting infrastructure. Participants will have the chance to develop a local climate change plan where mitigation and adaptation strategies are translated into concrete actions, based on the risks of a vulnerability assessment, management tools and the financial constraints.